I open my door. The air outside is cold and gray and full of the resin smell of forest.
I stretch my body out after sitting for so long.
A small wave of heat hits me. Warmth, low in my pelvis. Not the heat from the cabin. Smaller. Faster. Sharper at the edges.
I steady myself on the truck door.
Thaw is at my elbow immediately. "Jen?"
"I'm fine."
"You're not. Tell me what."
"It's not the heat. Not the same kind. It's something else."
His gold eyes go careful. He reads my body, and what he finds makes his jaw set.
"Inside," he says.
Harek is out of the truck behind me with our duffel on his shoulder. He doesn't say anything. He just falls in at my other side, his free hand finding the small of my back, and he walks me up the porch steps that way — Thaw on the right, Harek on the left, the two of them braced around me without comment.
The warm width of Harek's palm at my spine is comforting. The patch on my chest is humming. And Harek's hand is steady on me.
We get inside.
The house is warm and lived in. The twins have a wood stove set up and Dean moves over to light it. There are clean blankets folded on the back of the couch. There is a coffee maker on the counter that has been left half-full.
It is a home.
I sit down on the couch. My legs feel wobbly. Thaw sits on the coffee table in front of me, close, and his hands take both of mine. Harek sets the duffel down by the door and crosses to thecouch and folds onto the floor by my feet, not touching, his back against the couch frame, one shoulder against my knee through the sweats.
"Tell me what it feels like," Thaw says.
"I don't know."
"Try."
I try. "Like the heat from the cabin, but smaller. Lower. And bright. Like there's a light on inside my pelvis. Not painful. Just aware."
"Aware how."
"I don't know how. I just feel it. I feel my body. I feel into my body in a way I haven't before. The patch is humming. The bonds are humming. Everything is —"
I stop.
There is a thought trying to land. I do not want it to.
Thaw is watching me. Dean is in the kitchen pouring water from the kettle into a glass and his hands have stopped moving. Harek's shoulder against my knee has gone very still.
The thought lands.
I say it.
"Could these be pregnancy symptoms?"
The room goes quiet.
Harek does not move. Thaw's hands tighten around mine.
